Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Mid-Week Morning Free Fiction

Part 1 of ? - More to come today.

Fiction

• At The Colored Lens: "The Master’s Voice" by Todd Thorne. Speculative Fiction.
"“Eat. Eat,” came the woman’s voice again, followed shortly by the can opener’s dutiful grind. “Eat. Eat,” the voice repeated in lifeless monotone as blobs of wetness sucked loose and splattered."

• At HiLobrow: "King Goshawk - part 35" by Eimar O'Duffy.Science Fiction.
"When King Goshawk, the supreme ruler among a caste of “king capitalists,” buys up all the wildflowers and songbirds, an aghast Dublin philosopher travels via the astral plane to Tír na nÓg. First the mythical Irish hero Cúchulainn, then his son Cuanduine, travel to Earth in order to combat the king capitalists. Thirty-five years before the hero of Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, these well-meaning aliens discover that cultural forms and norms are the most effective barrier to social or economic revolution."

"When I ask my friends what they want to be when they grow up, they say a
hotshot fireman, a policeman, the head of an assassin’s guild. Tyra’s
always pushing the envelope. But when I grow up, all I want to be is
what I can never be. I want to be like my friends. I want to be a human
child."

• At The WiFiles: "Resistance is Futile" by Jessica Morrow Speculative Fiction.
"Every day was an exciting new one for Hamish Harrison. He knew it sounded ridiculous, but he couldn’t wait to jump out of bed at seven on the dot, and get straight into the thick of things."

"Tarzan, Bertha Kircher and Lt. Smith-Oldwick have made their escape from the city of maniacs, Xuja. Now they are fleeing, pursued by the maniacal Xujans and their hunting lions.

• At Journey Into: "The Secret Diary" by Cassie Alexander. Fantasy.
"A young boy finds himself the target of several attempts on his life."

• At Escape Pod: "The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere." by John Chu. Science Fiction.
"The water that falls on you from nowhere when you lie is perfectly ordinary, but perfectly pure. True fact. I tested it myself when the water started falling a few weeks ago. Everyone on Earth did. Everyone with any sense of lab safety anyway. Never assume any liquid is just water. When you say “I always document my experiments as I go along,” enough water falls to test, but not so much that you have to mop up the lab. Which lie doesn’t matter. The liquid tests as distilled water every time."

• At Pseudopod: "The Screwfly Solution" by James Tiptree Jr.
"AP/Nassau: The excursion liner Carib Swallow reached port under tow today after striking an obstruction in the Gulf Stream off Cape Hatteras. The obstruction was identified as part of a commercial trawler’s seine floated by female corpses. This confirms reports from Florida and the Gulf of the use of such seines, some of them over a mile in length. Similar reports coming from the Pacific coast and as far away as Japan indicate a growing hazard to coastwise shipping.”

• At Tales to Terrify: "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
""Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart smote him. "What a wretch am I to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no, no; 't would kill her to think it. Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven.""